Lost Gold Chronicles: A Magical Valentine's Day
by CJ Moliere
Summary: Rumplestiltskin and Belle's dearest friend Fiona despises Valentine's Day with a passion as it is a painful reminder of the most tragic event in her life, the loss of her husband. The couple sets out to make the day a joyful one for her again with a little bit of true love's magic. Takes place two years after Once Upon a Time In Miami and Vegas.


**Authors Notes: For those reading The Heart of Everything, you understand why Rumple has two last names now instead of one in this story but for those who haven't, this story is from my Gold Chronicles series and takes place two years after The Heart of Everything, Storybrooke Casino and Once Upon a Time In Miami and Vegas. Gold is his cursed surname, Strogoff is his mother's surname and he uses it in her honor. **

Rumplestiltskin Strogoff Gold found no reason to enjoy Valentine's Day until he was reunited with his true love, Belle. He thought he'd been the only one who didn't enjoy the holiday reserved for lovers until he had a discussion with his in-laws, Fiona and Cattie McDermott. Cattie's daughter Channon was married to his adopted son Diego and Fiona was Cattie's mother, still a very fiesty woman even though she was in her late eighties. Rumple and Belle were paying a visit to the woman at their castle in Scotland called Ballyloch.

"Are you going to Channon's ball, ladies?" he asked them.

"Yes," Cattie answered.

"NO!" Fiona shouted. "I hate Valentine's Day. That damned girl knows that so why in all hell does she even bother inviting me?"

"Mum..." Cattie began.

"Don't you 'Mum' me, girl. I'm not going and that'll be my final word on it!" the elderly woman snapped and stormed back into the castle.

"What was all that about, Cattie?" Belle asked worriedly. "I've never seen Fiona so upset."

"I forgot..." Cattie said sadly.

"Forgot what, dearie," Rumple inquired softly.

"My father...he passed away on Valentine's night. Oh, she may act like she's been around since then but...she hasn't. She tried. The first date she went on was ten years after his death and she cried the whole time. And if Mum doesn't go to the ball, I'm not either because I don't want her to be alone. I...I'm going to go see if she's all right." Cattie stood up and followed her mother back into the castle.

"Oh Rumple, there has to be something we can do!" Belle cried.

He sighed. "What Fiona wants, I can't give her. I can't bring Ian back."

"You're one of the most powerful mages in all the realms, Rumplestiltskin. You've always found a way to make things happen. Maybe there's some sort of magic in your Ozian heritage that can do it. If you remember, your cousin brought DG back from the dead."

"She surrendered part of her life force to do it Belle and that spell only works immediately after death. Ian McDermott has been dead thirty years."

"And when we were in England you made King Richard III and Henry VIII appear in physical form by using Aramon's Talisman," she pointed out. Rumple's help had been called for by his adopted son while he was in England searching for the missing fathers of the children of his two best friends. They were hiding out in Mayford, an ancestral home of the other branch of Channon, Fiona and Cattie's family. The mansion was being haunted by the two former kings of England who had history with the family. Rumple was able to banish Henry VIII from the house but Richard III kept returning, watching over the property and those who stayed there.

"They were ghosts, dearie," he pointed out.

Rumple suspected there was a ghost at Ballyloch as well and this one didn't like him one bit. Twice he felt like someone tried to trip him, someone switched the shower from hot to cold while he was in it, several of his suits had been torn to shreds and his cane disappeared when he seemed to need it the most. It never attacked him when he was with Belle but he expected some kind of prank being pulled on him when he was alone.

He sent Belle to make sure Fiona was feeling better while he went for a walk, taking both Aramon's Talisman and the Strogoff Emerald with him as protection. While he was walking past the lake he felt a sharp kick to his backside that sent him flying into the lake.

"That's it!" he growled when he surfaced, waving his hand over the talisman. "I command you to show yourself!"

"Well, aren't you a sight," he heard a thick Scottish brogue eerily smiliar to his chuckling from the shore behind him. The sorcerer turned his head and gasped in shock when he saw a man who could be his twin standing at the edge of the lake. "Don't just stand there gawking lad, get out of the damned water before ye freeze yer ballocks off."

"Who the hell are you?"

"I might be asking you the same question. Who the hell are you and why are you here with my wife and daughter?"

Now Fiona's fascination with him made perfect sense. Every time she looked at him, she saw her late husband.

"Ian McDermott?"

The other man nodded. "Now that I've answered your question, you'd best be answering mine. Who the hell are you?"

"Rumplestiltskin Strogoff Gold."

"Rum...what? What t'hell kinda name is that?"

"Rumple, why are you all wet...oh my goodness!" Belle gasped as she looked at her husband then Ian McDermott and back to her husband again. Ian McDermott flashed a charming smile at her.

"My name's Ian McDermott. And who would you be?" he asked silkily.

"She's _my _wifeBelle," Rumple grumbled as he crawled out of the lake and pulled Belle to his side protectively.

"Cattie said Fiona admired you so much because you reminded her of her husband, not that he looks exactly like you!" Belle cried. "How is this possible?"

"I have no idea," the sorcerer muttered. "Look, Ian...I don't have that kind of interest in Fiona and Cattie. They're good friends of mine..and my in-laws so would you please stop shredding my clothes, freezing me out in the shower, trying to trip me and hiding my cane? I need it to walk, dammit!"

"I just don't like seeing other men pawing my wife. Never did."

Belle giggled. "She paws him, not the other way around."

Rumple waved his hand over his clothing and dried himself. Ian backed away.

"What are you...a wizard?"

"Yes. How do you think I made you appear in physical form, dearie?"

"I need a drink."

"No, you need to see your wife."

"I do see her...but she doesn't see me," he confessed sadly. "And when I try to touch her...my hands just pass right through her!"

"Now you can touch her," Belle reminded him.

"I'd scare the daylights out of her at her age and possible send her into a heart attack and I don't want to do that."

"Rumple...the spell you used to accelerate Wendy's age...can it be reversed?" Belle inquired of her husband.

"Why?"

She smiled. "Because I think I know how we can get Fiona to go to the ball...and here's how I want to do it."

The two men listened with interest as Belle laid out her plan. Having part of her husband's heart inside her and living with him allowed her to learn a lot more about magic, especially true love's magic. She'd seen what it could do firsthand and unlike the other magic her husband performed, it would not extract a physical price from him.

While Belle hid Ian in their suite at the castle, Rumple teleported back to Storybrooke to borrow Blue's wand and an Ozian spellbook. Ian was close to pacing a hole in the floor by the time Rumple returned with the magical items.

"Are you sure this will work?" Ian asked worriedly.

"Casting it requires a lot of love and belief," Rumple explained. "From you most of all."

"You won't have any trouble with that from me."

Later that night they put their plan into motion. Rumple held the Blue Fairy's wand over Fiona's sleeping form while the Strogoff Emerald glowed around her neck. Ian and Belle watched with amazement as her short silver hair transformed into long, curly red locks. Her body and facial features changed from those of an elderly woman into the beautiful twenty year old woman she'd been in the photograph beside the bed. Ian kneeled beside the bed and took her hand in his, cradling it against his cheek.

"She looks just the way she did when I first met her," he murmured.

"She'll only be like this until sunrise the day after Valetine's Day and then you'll go back to being a ghost...until next year or when she finally joins you. I know it's not much..."

"It's enough," Ian said as he looked up with tears in his eyes. "Thank you...both of you."

"Well, let's get you ready for the party," Rumple said as he and Belle led Ian out of the room.

Fiona awoke on Valentine's Day on her husband's side of the bed as she always did, shocked when she saw a nest of long flame red hair fanning about her face. She hadn't worn her hair long since Ian's death and even then it had some silver strands in it. She sat up and screamed when she looked in the mirror above her dressed, seeing her younger self staring back at her.

"Cattie..._Cattie!" _she cried out. The door flew open and her daughter raced into the room, still the same age as she'd been the night before.

"What..._Mum!? _Is...Is that you?"

"I...think it's me...oh my god Cattie...what happened...I look like I'm twenty. Is this a dream?" her mother asked frantically.

"Oh I don't think it is. _RUMPLESTILTSKIN STROGOFF GOLD YOU GET YOUR ASS IN HERE!_" she bellowed out into the hallway. A cane was heard tapping on the marble floors and Rumple walked into the room. "What the hell did you do to Mum?" she demanded as she delivered a hard smack to his backside.

"It's part of her Valentine's Day gift," he explained calmly. "I reversed her aging process from the night before Valentine's Day until sunrise the day after. Your mother now looks the way she did years ago."

"_Why?_"

"It's a surprise, dearie."

"It better be a damned good one lad or I am taking the Bruiser to your ass!" Fiona threatened as she jumped out of bed. "I don't even know why I'm calling you a lad now since I look younger than you!"

"And probably as spicy at that age, weren't you?" he teased.

"You bet I was!" she snapped.

In Rumple and Belle's bedroom Ian chuckled as he listened to his wife's tirade. "Ahhh I missed getting a good tongue lashing from her. I expect I'll be getting one as soon as she sees me."

"I think she'll be so glad to see you that she'll forget everything else," Belle said softly. "You remember what you're supposed to do, don't you?"

He smiled. "I'm reliving the best day of my life. How can I forget?"

Hours later the group minus Ian teleported to the Oasis Club in Miami, Florida. Rumple would bring the ghost himself later. When he walked into the ballroom with the three woman beside him, none of them recognized Fiona at all...except her shellshocked grandchildren when they approached.

"G...Grammy?!" Channon Rivera stammered.

"That's impossible Channon. That's not Fiona. She's twenty if a day," her husband spoke up.

"She looks just like Grammy did in her wedding picture," Jamie McDermott clarified. "Is it really you?"

"What's this tell you, lad?" Fiona asked as she stepped behind her grandson and smacked his backside.

"It's you all right, but how...?" Jamie asked as he massaged his sore bottom.

"Ask him," she said, pointing at Rumple. "He says its part of my Valentine's Day surprise."

"I reversed the aging process on your grandmother until sunrise tomorrow," Rumple answered.

"Why?"

"You'll see."

"That's all he keeps saying...you'll see," Cattie grumbled. "This better be good because Mum _hates _today."

Several wives and girlfriends started feeling jealous as their men began to approach Fiona to dance with her. There was no denying she'd been a beauty at age twenty and had a headstrong personality to match. Her first partner for the evening was Hook.

"Had I known you back then...I would've carried you off on my pirate ship. I still would," he teased as he spun her across the floor while a jealous Emma looked on.

"Lad, I wouldn't be able to keep up with you when I'm back to normal," she said and chuckled. "But the women in my family have always had a fascination for pirates and been carried off by one or two."

"I'm not surprised."

"Your Emma looks like she wants to smother me in my sleep. Are you ever going to marry her?"

"I keep trying but she keeps saying no." he confessed sadly.

"Don't give up, Killian. If you do, you'll never be happy. It took me five years to get my Ian to marry me and we were together for a long time. He was the love of my life and there isn't a day that goes by where I don't miss him, especially today. I lost him today..." she croaked.

"I'm so sorry Fiona," Hook murmured as he embraced her.

"No...I am...I'm ruining our dance."

"You're fine. Awww damn, here comes Robin."

"Mind if I borrow your partner?" he asked Hook.

"I don't but your wife I'm sure does."

Robin laughed. "She'll get over it. Come on, Fiona," he said as he took her hands in his and led her into the next dance.

"When the hell is she going to stop being the center of attention?" Emma hissed to Belle.

"Right after Rumple starts the second half of her surprise. Emma, please don't be angry. Valentine's Day is difficult for her and all we wanted to do was make her happy."

"What's the big deal?"

"It's the anniversary of our grandfather's death, that's what!" Channon snapped. "Now shut the hell up and let her enjoy herself!"

Finally it was Rumple's turn to dance and he'd changed into his black leather outfit knowing it was her favorite. He bowed gracefully. "Are you ready, my lady?"

She grinned. "I always am when you're dressed like that." She held out her hands for him and he led her back out to the dance floor while Belle looked on with a small smile on her lips. "Your lassie is the only woman in this room who doesn't want to kill me right now."

He chuckled. "Belle's gotten used to having to share me with you and Cattie. Are you having a good time?"

"Oh yes...reminds me of the old days at Ballyloch. Mum used to host big parties and invite anyone who was everyone. Of course if we got a little business that evening, that was even better. People would dance til their feet fell off part of the night then spend the rest of it in bed. Sometimes she held a companion auction just to spice things up a bit."

"A little birdie told me one of those auctions involved you."

She smiled wistfully. "It wasn't supposed to. That was actually the night Ian and I met. One of his mates brought him to Ballyloch to have a good time with one of the girls but he was more interested in getting drunk. I was walking past his table when the lout pulled me onto his lap and tried to kiss me so I smacked him a good one and walked away. Then when the auction started, he brought the whole house to silence when he offered a million pounds for me. Me. Still a virgin. Nothing interesting happened that night...we just talked but I was his from that night on...even if he was married at the time. I'm surprised Belle didn't already tell you this."

"She did. I just wanted to hear your take on it."

"I miss him Rum...I miss him so much."

"I know, dearie. Come on...it's time for your other surprise."

Fiona shook her head. "I can only imagine what's going on in that head of yours."

Belle stepped out into the center of the ballroom, her blue eyes twinkling with mischief. "All right, ladies and gentlemen...as you all know Rumple and I have decided to do something special for Fiona for Valentine's Day. The first part we already did. Right now her aging process has been reversed so that she is twenty years old again. Now then, back in her castle at Ballyloch, her Mum used to have what she called a companion auction. The highest bidder gets to spend the rest of the evening with this lovely lady...what happens is up to her. Shall we start the bidding please?"

"Rum!" Fiona cried.

"A thousand dollars!" Hook shouted out.

"Two thousand!" Whale added.

"You are both pathetic! Five hundred thousand!" Rumple called out.

_"One million pounds!" _boomed a male voice similar to Rumple's with a thicker Scottish accent from the back of the room. A collective gasp of shock went up as a man dressed like Rumpleand even looked like him made his way through the crowd while Fiona stood still, her hand pressed to her heart.

"D...Daddy?" Cattie croaked.

"No...it can't be," Jamie and Channon said in unison.

"Would you repeat your bid sir?" Belle asked.

"You heard me..._one million pounds." _the man said firmly as he approached Fiona.

"I...Ian..." she moaned, her limbs giving out. Her husband took her into his arms as she fainted.

"What's going on?" Cattie inquired. "Is that...is that my father?"

"It's me, baby," Ian said softly.

"But..you're...you're...dead!"

"I am poppet but Rum is able to keep me in physical form until tomorrow so I can be with you and your mum. After that...I go back to terrorizing any man who tries to lay a finger on you or your mum at Ballyloch."

Cattie sobbed with joy and threw her arms around her father, her children followed suit.

"I was right!" Channon exclaimed. "There was a ghost at Ballyloch! It was you the whole time, Pappy?"

"Why d'ye think every man who had his hands where they weren't wanted had so many accidents?"

"Me included," Rumple muttered.

_"You?" _Hook laughed. "I would loved to have seen that!"

"Oh, I just bet."

"What did he do to you, Rum?" Cattie asked through her tears.

"Oh, I made him take a spill in the lake."

"That was only the end of it. You destroyed my suits, made me freeze to death in the shower, hid my cane and tried to trip me!" The others laughed. Rumple waved his hand over Fiona and roused her from her unconscious state.

"I...Ian...tell me I'm not dreaming...tell me you're here," she sobbed.

"Does this feel real to you," he said and kissed her.

"You have got to be kidding me! Fiona's husband could be the crocodile's twin! Does he really look like that or was a spell put on him?"

"No, he really looks like that," Cattie confirmed. "Daddy...Mum! Come up for air!"

"Oh, you hush up!" Fiona said, reluctantly breaking their kiss. "I haven't been able to kiss your father in thirty years so I'm making up for lost time." She glanced over at Rumple. "But...I thought you said...you couldn't bring him back."

"He's only here until sunrise tomorrow, Fie. Then he'll go back to what he was...the ghost who puts the fear of God into any male in Ballyloch...until next Valentine's Day or ..." He hesitated to add the last bit hoping it would be a long time before he would have to say goodbye to one of his dearest friends. Knowing her, however, he suspected she'd find some way to come back and haunt him. Fiona reached out and caressed his cheek.

"This is the best Valetine's gift I've had in years. Thank you Rumple."

"It was my pleasure dearie."

"Well Ian...you won the bid...she's yours," Belle spoke up. "What are you going to do with her?"

"Oh I know exactly what I'm doing with her," he said as he stood up. "Channon, lass, where are the bedrooms in this place?"

"Ummm...first staircase to the right, Pappy."

"Now if you'll all excuse me, I'll be taking my wife to bed now. And you bloody perverts can keep your eyes and your hands to yourselves from now on!" he added to the men in the room as he walked out of the room carrying a giggling Fiona.

"Papa, that had to have been one powerful spell for you to do. Why aren't you worn out?" Bae inquired of his father.

"True love's magic doesn't require a price, Bae. Once we found out how difficult today is for Fiona we decided to do something special for her. I already knew I could trap a ghost in physical form using my talisman from the ghosthunting I did in England but reversing Fiona's age was a bit more difficult. She'll go back to her normal age tomorrow but I've found a way to make the spell work every Valentine's Day."

"How?"

"By combining strands of their hair with the hairs of a couple who are already united by true love's magic and have a strong connection to one of them...Rumple and me," Belle explained.

"That is so romantic," Snow said dreamily.

While the others went back to dancing Rumple turned to his wife with the same seductive grin on his lips as Ian had for Fiona earlier. "What do you say we find one of those bedrooms and have our own celebration?" he suggested.

"Lead the way darling," she whispered. He linked her arm in his and escorted her out of the room.

It wasn't long before the rest of the couples started making excuses and finding beds for the night. It was Valentine's Day after all, the only holiday in the world made exclusively for lovers.

Hours later as they lay in each other's arms, Rumple kissed his wife softly on the lips.

"Happy Valentine's Day, sweetheart."

"Happy Valentine's Day darling."

In the room beside theirs, Fiona McDermott smiled softly as she curled up beside her sleeping husband. Things would go back to the way the were in the morning but she knew she had something to look forward to next year thanks to her two dearest friends ad a little of true love's magic...to be with the man she loved on that special day...and not even death could seperate them again.


End file.
